Actually, the current plan is for people to do a bit of legwork before the city/weekend gets picked. Experience suggests "New York on June 2" won't get people as interested as "This cool little hotel in SOHO on June 2." There's also the problem of picking a city and a date and then discovering there's no suitable place available...confirming with a hotel/inn etc they're available, and interested in having us, has worked well.

It's not quite an RFP, but there are similarities.

ETA: And please! Feel free to research! The more people looking, the better chance of finding someplace really interesting and fun, as we did with the Margarita in Evanston. We weren't even looking in Evanston when we started...but I'm so glad we did before we were finished.

How big do you think we MIGHT be based on responses from the survey Ax?

Many locations are based on the size of the group...some are generous in the range...25-100 or so. Others are pretty specific.

About 5-6 year ago a "super moot" started to be planned here and Denver was decided on. We found two really cool retreats with inexpensive rooms, great grounds for meetings, walking distance to very cool things to see and food service if it was wanted.

That is the sort of thing I am TRYING to find in the Boston area, so far no luck. But there are plenty of hostels and other sorts of rooming to be had. Many walking tours of Boston also. (If Boston is picked)

The moots I've been to have been in the 25 person range, plus or minus a few. My experience suggests there's about a dozen hard-core, go almost anywhere types, and from there it's location and timing. But 25 is a dependable minimum.

The Evanston moot was in, well, Evanston. Near the El and METRA lines. Getting around wasn't too bad. There were a couple of day trips to downtown Chicago.

The SF moot was up in the Marina district, which is centrally located in some ways, but some distance from either major airport. There was a day trip to Muir Woods that required car pooling, walking trips to the bay and to Fisherman's Wharf, car pooling to the dinner and concert at Teremia's in Berkeley, and car pooling to the bonfire on Ocean Beach.

All of which points up that we're fairly flexible. Having a major airport nearby, or available via transit, is a must, but beyond that...

Okay just general information. I spoke to the greater area Boston travel and convention bureau just now. They were very keen on what we are planning and a nice lady named Julia (go figure ) is going to email me links to ideas for where we can stay - hopefully that also has some dining options on site and close to Boston restaurants and places we would like to see.

I explained to Julia what just happened in Oxford and that something similar or quirky would be welcomed to consider.

Axordil. I used to live in San Francisco and I am surprised that you folks didn't utilize the cable cars or BART for much of your transportation getting about the city. Still I wish I could have come to that Moot!!

I think most of us used BART to get into the City from one of the airports. If I were doing it again I would use the trolley lines more...though I'd still rent the MINI convertible. I mean, hello, driving across the GG with the top down? Bucket list.

That's where this gets tricky. Some of us are in decent financial positions, others are going to be pressed to come at all. Ideally we won't exclude people by cost.

This has been handled at previous moots in three ways:

1) Staying at private residences. This obviously is both the cheapest and the hardest to arrange. Not everyone who lives in an area is going to have room to spare in the first place, to start out with. Generally if this happens it's by private arrangement.

2) Hostel-type lodging. We did this in Chicago/Evanston, where there were two-single-bed rooms that used the dorm-style shared bathroom. The place also had standard rooms and even suites...that range made them very, very attractive. For the price ranges--look up the Margarita Inn in Evanston.

3) 4 or more to the room. We did this with the Cow Hollow in SF, I believe.

The idea is to keep it as cheap as possible for those who need to pinch pennies--$50 per person per night, say--while not ending up in a dive.